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Fellini: A Director’s Notebook (1969)
Filmmaker(s): Federico Fellini

Fellini discusses his views of making motion pictures and his unorthodox procedures. He seeks inspiration in various out of the way places. During this film viewers go with him to the Colisseum at night, on a subway ride past Roman ruins, to the Appian Way, to a slaughterhouse, and on a visit to Marcello Mastroianni's house. Fellini also is seen in his own office interviewing a series of unusual characters seeking work or his help.

9 1/2 Including Seven Civilisations for myself, this is the most rewarding Fellini experience I have had. That's because in his early work, where one takes risks, he was very less ambitious narrative-wise than his later work. But then when he got to the later...


Published December 11, 2024
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Alice in Acidland (1969)
This is NO fairytale!
Filmmaker(s): Donn Greer

Cute and perky college student Alice is invited to a "pool party" by Freida, a female teacher who is actually a lesbian and has designs on Alice. At the party Alice gets drunk, takes acid and immediately becomes a lesbian, taking a bath with Freida. Later Alice gets mixed up with LSD-addicted hippies, rape, more lesbians, more LSD, orgies, suicide, and having sex with guys in boxers.

Showing the Unshowable the root, the filmmakers dilemma has two fangs. One challenge is to take things that people know and bend and filter them in ways that can be seen as “natural” when it gets to the other side, past the set, the film,...


Published November 30, 2022
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Barbarella (1968)
See Barbarella do her thing!
Filmmaker(s): Roger Vadim

In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

Which Skin? are only a few films that can be called roots. 1968 generated two of them, “2001” and this. “2001” is about the ambiguities of who is narrating. This is about the ambiguities of where the skin is. From the very beginning, the prurient...


Published May 16, 2023
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Nanami: The Inferno of First Love (1968)
What happens to innocence in the inferno of first love?
Filmmaker(s): Susumu Hani

A teenage goldsmith with a dark past tragically falls in love with a young nude model.

Fluid Abstraction may find this hard to see. It is a Japanese “new wave”, film. It has a story of course, but such things are largely irrelevant. I’ll give it because you may not see it. (In my comments, I assume most folks have seen...


Published July 3, 2022
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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The ultimate trip.
Filmmaker(s): Stanley Kubrick

Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world's most advanced super computer.

Dueling Gods the disaster of ‘Sparticus.' Kubrick has centred each project on the mysteries of the narrative. Each film explores some theory or notion about the paths of storytelling and the fragility of those paths. Some get very abstract, like’Barry Lyndon,' where identities are adopted...


Published December 11, 2024
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The Man Without a Map (1968)
Filmmaker(s): Hiroshi Teshigahara

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching.

Life as Navigation has an anchor when they enter a film. With a little exposure to world cinema, that anchor for each film is rooted in the tradition you select from that culture. This is a personal choice, made long before you encounter the film....


Published September 30, 2022
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Death by Hanging (1968)
Filmmaker(s): Nagisa Ōshima

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

Film as Execution of the benefits of writing film comments is that readers will sometimes send me recommendations. If that were the only benefit, and if this were the only recommendation I would get, it would be worth it. By reading the comments, you may think...


Published December 10, 2024
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Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967)
Filmmaker(s): Nagisa Ōshima

A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.

Solid Shadows with Death Wishes know a few of this man’s films. They are among the richest experiences I know, but I was surprised at how deeply this one worked on me. The surprise comes in part from knowing how specific his target audience was. I...


Published May 13, 2022
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Murder by the Book (1967)
Filmmaker(s): Mel Damski

Mild-mannered mystery writer D. H. Mercer has become so immersed in his material that his creation, hard-boiled private eye Biff Deegan, constantly appears to him as a hallucination. Intent on getting rid of Biff, and replacing him with a more civilized detective, Mercer soon finds himself in a genuine mystery involving art fraud, murder, and a beautiful lady in peril.

Double Folds isn’t worth watching for what it is, but I count it as a notable example, more so because it is a cheap TeeVee production with low aspirations. The overall story is about art forgery. The structure is adventuresome. The story we see is written...


Published February 24, 2023
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The President’s Analyst (1967)
Only two people on earth want Sidney Schaefer alive. Sidney Schaefer. And the President of the United States.
Filmmaker(s): Theodore J. Flicker

At first, Dr. Sidney Schaefer feels honored and thrilled to be offered the job of the President's Analyst. But then the stress of the job and the paranoid spies that come with a sensitive government position get to him, and he runs away. Now spies from all over the world are after him, either to get him for their own side or to kill him and prevent someone else from getting him.

Surrogates gas has cooled on this balloon, and the (political) Earth shifted underneath. But that makes it a bit more enjoyable if you come to this for the structure. The story device is simple: cold war spy versus spy, only to learn that the (then monopoly)...


Published February 9, 2024
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